Bulacan

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Bulacan province is included at the Central Plain of Luzon; the western part is generally flat and is drained by the Angat and Pampanga Rivers. It is located North of Metro Manila and surrounded by Nueva Ecija on the North and Northeast, Quezon on the East, Rizal on the south, Manila Bay on the South and Southwest and Pampanga on the West.

The province has lots of festivities and other celebrations, which will enable one to experience enjoyment and pleasure. It has what they call Pulilan Carabao Festival, Parancillo, Fertility Rites, Lenten Rites and a lot more.

The province has numerous monuments and historical sites, which commemorate the long and bloody struggle of the Philippine people against the Spanish and American colonialists. These include Barasoain Church, Casa Real, Malolos, the former Republican printing press now converted into a museum, the San Rafael Church, Calumpit Bridge, Marcelo H. Del Pilar Shrine, Don Felipe Buencamino Marker at San Miguel and the Calumpit Church, which was a burial place for revolutionaries and Spaniards during the war.

Madlum, Pinaglarean, Aguinaldo Caves and Sibul Spring Resort are some of the natural attractions located in Bulacan that really fascinate visitors especially the tourists.

People in this area earn their living through leather tanning, cement bag making, ceramics, textiles, food processing, shoemaking, machinery and cottage making. Bulacan’s principal products are rice, corn, sugarcane, watermelon, bamboo, mangoes and various vegetables.

There are 3 ways to get to Bulacan: one is through the historic MacArthur Highway, another is through the North Expressway and through the Cagayan Valley Road.

The province's name is derived from the Tagalog word "bulak" meaning cotton, which was its former principal product.

Bulacan started with small fishing settlements along the coast of Manila Bay, and expanded into the interior with the coming of the Spaniards in the 16th century. These settlements formed the nucleus of towns that were founded from 1572 (Bulacan and Calumpit) to 1750 (San Rafael). In 1848, the town of San Miguel was annexed to Bulacan from Pampanga.

A session of the Malolos Congress at Barasoain Church. Bulacan was one of the first eight provinces to rise against Spanish rule in the Philippine Revolution. The first phase of the revolution ended with the signing of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato in San Miguel in 1897 between the Filipinos and the Spaniards, after which the revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo was exiled to Hong Kong. The second phase saw the drafting of the constitution of the First Philippine Republic by the Malolos Congress at Barasoain Church in 1898. The subsequently established republic had its capital at Malolos until President Emilio Aguinaldo transferred it to San Isidro, Nueva Ecija in 1899 when the Philippine-American War broke out.

When the Americans established a civil government in the Philippines, they held the first election in the country in the town of Baliuag, Bulacan on May 6, 1899.